I've been finding references to "inside baseball" (although just to the game itself) throughout the 20th Century. I've heard it occasionally used as a metaphor in other fields. It seems George Will-ian.

Los Angeles Dodgers: Let's see ... you take career shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and move him to first base, which is where you were going to move second baseman Jeff Kent, who currently turns double plays with the grit of a high-heeled debutante trying to flag down a cab. Then you add third baseman Bill Mueller, whose knees can no longer accommodate the act of bending, and whose addition to the infield miasma effectively pushes the team's one legit fielder (gimpy-'til-June Cesar Izturis) into positional purgatory. Not unlike an elephant attempting to mate with a ceiling fan, the parts don't fit. On the plus side, new GM Ned Colletti boasts a once-in-a-lifetime baseball mustache; this generation will someday speak of its sturdy magnificence in the hushed, awed tones with which its parents discuss the facial-hair typhoon that was Al Hrabosky.

Here's the link:
http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/story/9185622

But the "Inside Baseball" column heading isn't really the same kind of "inside baseball" that I'm talking about above. I don't think SI.com's motivation for my column is to have me write about the arcane.

Had to find a way to filter all those out of my search results.

He's not entirely wrong, nor is he entirely right. But he sure does have style. He's got the style of a Alpine skier schussing to the Veronica's Secret happy hour.

Sigh. I of course meant, "Betty's Secret."

I kinda like it when sports cliches cross over to other sports, or to the mainstream. If a baseball team wins by seven runs, you hear the Sportscenter doofs say they won "by a touchdown." Or conversely, when a quarterback throws deep, he's "going for the homerun ball", whatever that means. And anytime someone somewhere does three of anything (sports-related or not), it's a "trifecta" or a "hat trick".

http://tinyurl.com/8fgw9

The first time I recall hearing the phrase "inside baseball" the context was major league baseball. The originator of the term, so far as I know, is the author and baseball abstracter, Bill James. I was a Mets fan reading him in the 1980s when he began to attract attention for his analysis of players and teams in The Bill James Baseball Abstract.

James was originally a press critic. He came to his ideas via philosophical conflict with the sportswriters' tribe. He thought baseball journalists had a firm grasp on the wrong end of the telescope. They were looking at their subject in a way that shrank it to insignificance, compared to the big picture James saw by tinkering with different measures over longer arcs of time. Thus, he spoke of inside baseball but also "outside baseball," taking the longer view but bringing that longer view into the game played tonight.

http://tinyurl.com/9p58c

http://tinyurl.com/bl5ca

The first refers to an 8-part series which ran in the OC Register; the second refers to a blog focusing on 1947 Los Angeles.

http://tinyurl.com/aewel

The story is in Spanish. And there's a poem at the end of the story too!

That's the problem with sportswriters today. No poems.

Actually, Perez wasn't all that good. He was 0-1 with a 4.16 ERA, but the opposition batted just .235 off of him.

Which leads me to believe that a lot of those hits were four-baggers.

That new post is one I might silently skip over though, just don't tell Jon!

Perhaps I will walk by and throw another Betty White grenade, or shout "Baez" in a crowded discussion topic...